Especially in this article that was JUST posted on MSN the day before the NY Times piece.

Frankly after watching the first episode (read the first two books BTW) I’m kind of leaning towards the NY Times take on the show.

But while it claims the sex was thrown in for the ladies, I have to really question that. Seriously – three sex scenes and not a one of them was even remotely sexy? It’s shameful AND pitiful.

They could really take a cue from Spartacus. The ridiculous 3-5 sex scenes per episode at least clock in with some caressing, rubbing and chiseled man chests. Has viewing access to hordes of delicious mostly-naked men ruined me for period-piece costumed TV shows forever? Perhaps. I mean, there was that semi-nude Dothraki dude, but he was not making with the charming. Gah, that whole scene was not well-done at all.

OK – this is getting into review territory. Not sure of what to make of all this controversy. I’m not an overwhelming GoT fan, but if anything, it’s the lack of sexy sex that turns me off. I mean…don’t dudes like sexy sex too? I would argue that teh ladiez are interested in this show, but so far I haven’t seen much of the show that’s interested in us.

Forced back-door sex gets a big frowny face from me. 😦

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About tinyheroes

Mindy Crouchley is a 33 year old woman with a degree in English and Technical Writing from Portland State University. She has accumulated three+ years experience in the Marketing and Communications field - with an emphasis on creating digital media content.
She has been reading comic books since she was 10 years old. She currently lives in outer southeast Portland with her spouse Dan Robertson, her baby girl, and their dog - Jabba the pug.
She spends her free time devouring books, crafting cosplay, video gaming, attending comic cons, writing stories/screenplays, attending book to film adaptation club meetings, volunteering, and watching copious amounts of TV and movies.

6 responses to “Games of Thrones Link Love: 04/20/2011”

I’m working my way through the first book and will be interested to see if I feel the need to bail after book two like you did (another friend from Ketten shared similar sentiments).

The sex in the show version of Game of Thrones did feel very HBO stylized. I was interested with how they invented sex scenes and removed others – there’s an entire scene with Catelyn and Ned post-coitus that has them clothed (what, older attractive people don’t have sex, too?), and they made the scene of Daenarys’ devirginizing look a lot more miserable than it was portrayed in the book. Those were the two things I took question with. All of the gratuitous boobage was par for the course, and I’d note that they did show some gratuitous male toplessness early on between the Stark boys – I remember publicly commenting about it to Echo. I’m suspecting they’ll take the True Blood route and give us plenty of both; they clearly made the boys get ripped for the show.

Is the forced back-door sex you were mentioning during the wedding scene? That was the one I was surprised they had included – and surprised they had made look BETTER than the book. In the book that scene is portrayed in an undeniably rapey way, while in the show they managed to make it look consensual – as I said to a friend, “The woman doesn’t seem to give a shit who is mounting her, as long as someone is.”

Of course, the portrayal of the Dothraki in the show drew up some INSANELY OBVIOUS race issues. It made me realize that those issues were in the book as well, but it made me realize that I’m more complacent with whitewashing in fiction than I am on the screen. I’m sure there are some blog posts on the issue that are waiting to be read…

I feel torn about the gender issues with the material – I’m not sure where I stand yet. Although Martin does a great job of creating strong female characters, he CONSISTENTLY reinforces the sexist atmosphere of the world, and although it’s easy to argue “that’s just how medieval books are”, that seems cheap and lazy. I’d love to see someone push the boundaries of creating an authentic medieval setting while questioning its latent sexism, like a female character who doesn’t wish for a male son, or a woman who doesn’t resent her bastard son, or a male who doesn’t see women in such clear virgin/whore terms. There are ways to keep the strong relationship between gender issues and politics (and political marriages, paternity and all of that) without being so unquestionably loyal to the other bits, like women only getting their sexual agency in legit marriages and otherwise being viewed as whores or rape victims. That part is tiresome.

The forced back-door sex was with Daenarys’ on her wedding night – it was not at all the way it read in the book and how I imagined it. From the book the dude seemed rather gentle and she got into it. They had another scene in the second episode that went the same way. It frustrated me because that is SO TYPICAL. It’s like they just couldn’t steer away from the rape narrative because it was dangling in their face. It’s such a classic way of representing women as victims and powerless. And it makes Daenerys choice to sexually please her husband in a different way more about power, and less about what I assumed from the book, was love or genuine feelings. It makes her character seem more power grubbing. Meh…I am going to give it one more episode before I cast final judgement.

Also, I’ve mentioned this to a few friends, Martin’s sex scenes strike me as remarkably juvenile, although that might be because that’s where my juvenile mind went. I do agree that the sex in this first episode was consistently unsexy, when it had a lot of potential to be more titillating. Definite mixed bag; I’m willing to give the next few episodes a shot and see where things land.

Curious to see what you think about the sex in this second episode? Thought it was definitely more sexy, and there was happily less of it. There is enough intriguing story that I don’t need to see weird sex every few minutes to titillate me.